- Catalyst

"Straight" Women, Queer Texts: Boy-Love Manga and the Rise of a Global Counterpublic
Author(s): Andrea Wood
Source: Women's Studies Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 1/2, The Global & the Intimate (Spring Summer, 2006), pp. 394-414
Published by: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York
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"STRAIGHT"
MANGA
TEXTS:
BOY-LOVE
QUEER
WOMEN,
ANDTHERISEOFA GLOBAL
COUNTERPUBLIC
ANDREA
WOOD
In recent years Japanese manga (comics) have exploded onto the North
American comics market, rapidly taking over the graphic novel sections
of book and comic stores and generating fans among adolescent audiences.1Most comics being translated and published in the United States
are aimed at this age group and along clear gender lines. Shortencomics
are considered to be primarily for boys and tend to focus on action and
adventure narratives, while shojocomics for girls typically present more
romantically oriented stories. More than a passing fad, manga have
become a firmly established segment of the U.S. publishing industry,
and in 2004 total manga sales for the United States and Canada were up
to $207 million (Memmott 2005, 4d). The manga industry in Japan is
even larger, with "grossrevenues totaling 531 billion yen ($5 billion)" in
2001 (Thorn 2004, 169).
Japanesemanga are flourishingin North America, but the majority of
texts translatedand sold are heterosexually oriented despite the fact that
there is a wide array of more sexually transgressive manga being published in Japan. Therefore, when Tokyopop, a U.S. publisherof Japanese
manga, released several new queer series in the fall of 2003 they took a
brave leap in introducingwhat I will be referring to as "boy-love manga"
to the U.S. comics market. As the name suggests, boy-love manga present
romantic narratives that visually depict homoerotic love between male
protagonists. By and large, these comics are created by and for women.
They have a well-established history in Japan and have generated a huge
following of female readers, particularly teenage girls. It is their recent
emergence on the North American manga market that raises several
interestingquestions.In particular,how does the transnationalcirculation
of these comics require us to consider their popularityin new ways? And
how do boy-love manga, by virtue of their queer content, work subversively within a more global context?
To clarify my terms, in this paper I will be using boy-lovemangaas a
[WSQ: Women'sStudiesQuarterly34: 1 & 2 (Spring/ Summer 2006)]
© 2006by AndreaWood. All rights reserved.
WOOD
larger all-encompassing genre term, while distinguishing between the
two separate categories of shonen-aiand yaoi that fall under it.2 Shonen-ai
manga tend to emphasize elaborate romances that contain imagery more
suggestive than sexually explicit. A palpable thread of erotic tension is,
however, present and maintained, predominantly through visual cues
such as sudden longing looks, unexpected caresses, suggestive body language, and intimate kissing scenes. Typical panels are often erotically
charged as readers catch a glimpse of a tongue here and a wandering
hand there, ultimately leaving more to the imagination than meets the
eye. In contrast, the often pornographically explicit boy-love manga
known as yaoi generally forgo coherent plot development in favor of
using every available opportunity to get the beautiful male characters in
bed together. In fact, yaoiis an acronym in Japanesethat ironically translates as "no climax, no punchline [sic], no meaning" (Schodt 1996, 37).
Despite the steadily growing publishingmarket for boy-love manga
outside Japan, current scholarshiphas not focused at great length on the
increasingly global nature of the readershipor the function and effect of
such widespread textual circulation. Mark McLelland (2000a) argues
that there is a clear distinction between how Japaneseand Western audiences receive homosexual texts, which necessitates a restricted cultural
analysis:
Although Japanese society is no more tolerant of men or
women expressing a gay or lesbian identity in real life than
many western [sic] societies, as a fantasy trope for women male
homosexuality is understood to be a beautiful and pure form of
romance. Hence, it is possible in Japan for mainstream bookstores to carry many boy-love manga titles (among them classics such as June and B-boy) that depict stories about love
between teenage boys often featuring illustrations of anal sex
and fellatio, which can be purchased freely by anyone, including their intended audience of high school girls. Japanese society clearly responds to depictions of male homosexuality in
ways very different from societies in the west [sic]. (287-88)
While McLelland is right to point out the fact that Japanhas a long artistic tradition of aestheticizing certain male homoerotic relationships as
representative of a "beautifuland pure form of romance,"3it is also per-
395
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WOMEN,
tinent to consider the ways in which different cultural contexts may
actually provide new readings of texts. Indeed, the growing popularity
of boy-love manga in the United States suggests that the differences
between Japanese and Western readers are not prohibitive to enjoying
these comics.
Our current moment, therefore, seems ripe for a new assessmentof
boy-love manga and the increasingly global nature of their circulation
and readership for several reasons. On the one hand, assessmentsof the
genre have frequently invoked as a key factor in female readers' interest
in these texts the patriarchally oppressive environment in which Japanese women live, and the ways in which female sexuality in Japaneseculture is confined to the reproductive function within the sanctioned space
of marriage (Aoyama 1988;Behr 2003; Kinsella 2000; McLelland 2000b).
While this information offers insight into the culturally specific context
of Japanese female readers, it can also risk oversimplifying the situation
andJapanesewomen's responsesto it. Nor does this cultural information
provide an equally accessible frame of reference when considering other
readers and other contexts. I would argue, therefore, that the transnational readership of boy-love manga requires new ways of thinking
about this phenomenon beyond the confines of Japan. The Internet is
already facilitating discourse and textual circulation among fans in different countries, generating what I perceive to be a global counterpublic
that is both subversive and fundamentally queer in nature. I will show
how this queerness both demonstrates that the readership is not coherent, monolithic, or singular and opens a discursive space for multiple and
fluid readings of boy-love manga to be circulated and shared among an
intimate network of strangersaround the world.
Despite what I perceive to be the markedly queer content of these
comics, U.S. publishersof boy-love manga, like their Japanese counterparts, market and advertise to an audience that is generally characterized as both female and straight. Consequently, when popular media
critics investigate this new publishing trend they reach very normative
conclusions about boy-love manga. Such is the case with a recent Los
AngelesTimesarticle (Solomon 2004) that concludes with the very safe
assurancethat these comics, because they are romantic narratives aimed
at women, must "portray relationships that are heterosexual at their
foundation." Not surprisingly, therefore, most considerations of the
phenomenon continue to categorize readers of boy-love manga as a
WOOD
group of "straight" women. While some scholars have been quick to
point out that readers' sexual orientation is difficult if not impossible to
accurately ascertain, and undoubtedly more complex than publishers
believe, there is still a general tendency to refer to the readershipas heterosexual (Behr 2003, 25; Kinsella 2000, 117; Mizoguchi 2003, 56; Thorn
2004, 172). Although some have acknowledged the limitations of assessing these texts and their popularity within heterosexual paradigms
(Behr 2003; Mizoguchi 2003; McLelland 2000a; Nagaike 2003) there has
not been a sustained discussion of how concepts of queernessmight help
us to begin thinking about how these manga function in a global context. I would like to consider this idea in more detail, by first assessing
some of the visual characteristics of boy-love manga and questions of
identification and interpretation they necessarily raise.
The gender representations and sexuality visualized in boy-love
manga challenge and trouble the belief that these categories are ontologically coherent, contained, and one dimensional- something that is
at the very heart of queerness. For as Eve Sedgwick argues, "queer"
involves "the open mess of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and
resonances, lapses and excess of meaning [that occur] when the constituent elements of anyone's gender, of anyone's sexuality aren't made
(or can't he made) to signify monolithically" (1993, 8). In other words,
boy-love manga are not simply queer because they depict homoerotic
love stories between men, but rather because they ultimately reject any
kind of monolithic understandingof gendered or sexual identity. At the
same time, erotic fantasies about love between beautiful and often
androgynous young men, as depicted in these comics, transgress and
queer how and what their supposedly "straight" female readers are
expected to fantasize about sexually.
Indeed, the very fact that characters' gender and sexual ambiguities
are encoded visually allows for myriad shifting and fluid identifications
and interpretations among readers. Lead characters are often highly
stylized and drawn to emphasize their beauty and sensuality, which
departs from more traditional romance narratives that tend to focus on
describing the uber-macho and phallic masculinity of male heroes.
While I do acknowledge that this tendency is more particularly a Western one, it is relevant to note that many Japanesemanga by and for men
reinforce the notion of an idealized man being ultramasculine and phallic in nature. Female manga artists have been characterized as reacting
397
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QUEER
WOMEN,
against this by producing more androgynous and aesthetically beautiful
men (Allison, 1996; McLelland 2000b). Thus, one might see a bishonen
(beautiful boy) in a typical boy-love manga with long flowing hair and
rather androgynous facial features, wearing stylish clothing that can
best be described by contemporary Western standardsas "metrosexual."
As McLellandnotes, "charactersin these stories are drawn in a style typical of women's comics: they are androgynous, tall, slim, elfin figures
with big eyes, long hair, high cheekbones, and pointed chins" (2000a,
277). For example, in Fig. 1 we see the protagonist (Shuichi Shindo) of
Maki Murakami's Gravitation
(2003) meeting the man he will fall in love
with (Yuki Eiri) for the first time. Two entire pages are devoted to this
moment, highlighting its significance to the narrative, and the perspective from which the scenes are viewed is predominantly Shuichi's as he
gazes at Yuki. Both characters have delicate facial features that emphasize their large eyes and artfully coiffed hair. No language is necessary
here as the images are left to convey the eroticized nature of the
Fig. 1. Shuichisees Yuki for the first time. Credit: Image providedcourtesy of TOKYOPOP
Inc. © 2002MAKIMURAKAMI.
All Rights Reserved.Firstpublishedin Japanin 1996by
GENTOSHA
COMICSINC.TOKYO.Englishtranslationrights arrangedwith GENTOSHA
COMICS
INC.TOKYOthroughTOHANCORPORATION,
TOKYO.
WOOD
momentby themselves.Yukiis highlightedas the centralobjectof desire
are
andwe see Shuichigazing on him with open awe. Indeed,hishonen
often posedin a deliberatemannerto engagethe viewer's gaze. This is
frequentlyachievedby takingup an entirepageto drawa characterin a
very carefully staged manner that maximizes his sex appeal. Often
flower imageryis drawnin the backgroundor aroundthe bordersurto emphasizehis beauty. Consequently,
roundingthe framedbishonen
bishonen
are
although
superficiallygenderedmale, theirvery androgynousappearanceallows for themto be readinsidea varietyof different
genderandsexualparadigms.
Mostnotably,thereis the very obviouspossibilityof lesbiandesire
beingencodedwithin thesecharacters.4In Fig. 2, we see the lead charactersof SanamiMatoh'sseriesFakestandingin frontof a fictionalized
New York City backdrop.Dee, the dark-hairedcharacter, almost
appearsto be wearing lipstick and has a feminine profile coupled
with a more butch haircut. His light-hairedpartner,Ryo, shares a
similarmeldingof butchfemme/femme-butch
physiognomy that upon
closer inspection gives
the impressionthat their
faces mirror one another's. At the same time,
thebodiesof bothcharacters are obscuredby the
bulky clothing that they
wear andby the segmentationof panelsthatfocus
in on their androgynous
facesandleave the view-
Fig. 2. Dee and Ryo Kissing.
Credit: Image providedcourtesy
Inc. © 2000
of TOKYOPOP
SANAMIMATOH.All Rights
Reserved.Firstpublishedin
Japanin 2000by BIBLOSCo.,
Ltd. Tokyo. Englishpublication
rights arrangedthroughBIBLOS
Co., Ltd.
399
400
"STRAIGHT"
TEXTS
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WOMEN,
er with great latitude for somatic interpretation. This kind of gender
indeterminacy opens up ample space for "perverse"readings (Sedgwick
1993) of these characters that speak not only to possible lesbian desires
and fantasies, but also other queer, transgender, and transsexual ones.
Shonen-aimanga showcase these possibilities most powerfully, because
they do not reveal genital imagery.
Although most shonen-aimanga are more focused on the development of a romantic plot line between male protagonists, sexual desire is
not simply "slight or incidental" (Thompson 2003, 43) as some popular
critics suggest. A successful series such as Gravitationrelies on sexual
innuendo, comedic double entendres, and coded visual references in
order to maintain an erotic undercurrent that is not sexually explicit in
nature. Such strategies can often be found in traditional romance fiction
as well, and readers become familiar with these kinds of tropes and are
able to read beyond the surface in order to glean the sexually charged
interactions between characters that might otherwise seem innocent.
Part of the pleasure in
this kind of reading is
based precisely on the
fact that sex is not in
plain view. The visual
nature of manga makes
this even more powerfully felt, by establishing heightened sexual
tension between characters imagistically. As
shown in the images of
Fig. 3. ShuichiandYuki
kissing.Credit: Image
providedcourtesyof
TOKYOPOP
Inc. © 2002 MAKI
All Rights
MURAKAMI.
Reserved.Firstpublishedin
Japanin 1996by GENTOSHA
COMICSINC.TOKYO.English
translationrights arranged
with GENTOSHA
COMICS
INC.TOKYOthroughTOHAN
TOKYO.
CORPORATION,
WOOD
Shuichi and Yuki kissing (Fig. 3), bodies are fragmented in each panel,
deliberately concealing the entirety of what is happening. We do
momentarily catch a glimpse of Yuki's wandering hand, but in other panels we are only privy to the sight of their faces as they're kissing while
the rest of their bodies remain obscured or hidden. This tantalizing and
suggestive imagery leaves a lot to the reader's imagination, allowing for
many different readings, identifications, and stimuli for fantasies.
In contrast, yaoi manga have no qualms about depicting hard-core
sex between bishonenthat reveal genitalia in often explicit detail. These
comics raise different questions about the fantasiespresented therein and
issues of reader identification. On the one hand, the possibility that
female readers find voyeuristic pleasure in scenes of anal sex and fellatio
between beautiful men challenges the desirability of heteronormative
constructs of masculinity, which negatively perceive a male desire to be
sexually penetrated, as "a voluntary abandonmentof the culturally constructed masculine identity in favor of the culturally constructed feminine one" (Halperin 1993, 422). Consequently, sex scenes in yaoimanga
have the potential to catalyze certain homophobic fears. Heterosexist
understandings of gender generally affirm that being penetrated is de
facto disempowering and ultimately feminizing, and that as a result penetration must be performed as an act that asserts power and masculine
primacy. Boy-love manga, however, tend to argue visually for the pleasure of both penetrating and being penetrated, and relationships
between male characters display equality and mutuality on an emotional
level, especially in their erotic moments together.5
Although the narrativesemphasize the need for lovers to develop an
equal romantic partnership,they do tend to clearly position charactersin
roles of sexual "top" and "bottom." The older male character is usually
the sexual instigator and "top," known as the seme, while his often
younger partner is the "bottom, or uke" (McLelland 2000a, 279-80).
What I find particularlyinteresting about the seme-uke
dichotomy in boylove manga is the fact that the possibilityof changing roles often serves as a
point of teasing humor and even sexual excitement between partners,
suggesting that these comics are much more cognizant of the performative nature of such roles than one might first imagine. For instance, in the
third volume of Kazuma Kodaka's Kizuna series (2004), which is being
published in North America by Be Beautiful, there is a comical erotic
moment when Ranmaru initiates sex with his partner, Kei, who is the
401
402
"STRAIGHT"
TEXTS
QUEER
WOMEN,
seme.The visually comedic nature of this moment is reflected in the fact
that Kei has been unwittingly forced into the position of uke(Fig. 4). As
Ranmaru(the light-haired character) becomes more sexually aggressive,
the panels humorously focus on Kei's facial expressions, which range
from confusion, mock fear, and disbelief as he mentally questionswhat is
happeningwith increasing anxiety. Just when it appearsthat Ranmaruis
going to reverse the roles for real, he instead enacts his own penetration
and the two exchange teasing banter before proceeding to make love.
This particular scenario highlights the culturally constructed nature of
sex roles, managing to find humor in them while questioning them at the
same time. While Kizunamerely plays with the notion of switching sex
roles, there is a subgenre of yaoiin Japan categorized as "reversible"that
actually presents reversible couples "who never draw borders between
uke and seme sexualities" (Nagaike 2003, 88). But as of yet, only one
reversible series, YoukaNitta's Embracing
Love{Hamwo Daiteita)(2005), is
in
the
United
States.6
being published
Fig. 4. Kei findinghimself on the "bottom."Credit: OriginalJapaneseversion "KizunaVol.
3" © 1996KazumaKodaka.Originally publishedin Japanin 1996by BIBLOSCo., Ltd. English
version © 2004A18Corporation.
WOOD
Despite the fact that the more
rigidly upheld seme-ukedichotomy
tends to reinforce notions of active/
passive sex roles, it is important to
emphasize that in general these
comics do not visuallyinfuse the role
of ukewith negative or disempowering connotations. Instead, the uke
is often depicted in a state of ecstasy, while his partneris more focused
on givinghim pleasure than on simply taking it for himself. In Fig. 5,
from You Asagiri's GoldenCain,the
ukeShun'spleasureis highlighted, as
we see his head thrown back, eyes
closed, andmouth open in a moment
Fig. 5. Uke partnerin ecstasy. Credit:
of ecstasy. His partner, Cain, the
OriginalJapaneseversion "Kinno
Cain"© 2003You Asagiri. Originally
semein the relationship,is revealedin
in Japanin 2003by BIBLOS
published
profile only. We cannot see his facial
Co., Ltd. Englishversion © 2004)A-18
Corporation.Englishtranslationrights
response, only that his eyes are
arrangedthroughTRANNET.All rights
focusedon gazing at Shun,watching
reserved.
his pleasure and thus implying that
this is important and perhapsnecessary for his own sexual gratification. Therefore, in opposition to a onesidedvisualizationof pleasurethat emphasizesthe importanceof the penetrating partner's orgasm, a mainstay of heterosexual pornography, yaoi
manga are more interested in illustratingboth partners'erotic fulfillment
and gratification.
There have been a wide array of approaches to and conclusions
about reader/viewer identification with boy-love manga, but they have
nonetheless remained focused primarily within a Japanese context. One
of my aims here, in contrast, is to suggest that the increasingly transnational readershipfor boy-love manga stymies efforts to make universalizing claims about processes of identification. More particularly, I
would argue that one of the fundamentally queer facets of boy-love
manga is that they can be read quite differently depending on the subjective lens through which they are viewed. The gender ambiguity and
sexual fluidity that I have located at the heart of the visual aesthetics of
403
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WOMEN,
these comics express a queerness that refuses complete coherence.
While these images may be read or perceived quite differently in diverse
cultural and artistic contexts, the erotic nature of their content seems to
speakintimately to the many desires and fantasiesof different women on
an increasingly global scale.7 For as Akiko Mizoguchi has noted,
"fantasies,realities, and representations are always related in yaoi texts,
but their relationshipsare never transparent"(2003, 65).
At the same time, transnationalreaders' shared investment in queer
subcultural texts establishes them as part of a resistant counterpublic,
and one that subverts the accustomed expectation of a "romance reading" public of women as only being interested in heterosexist narratives
deemed acceptable because they are believed to reinforce the gender
status quo.8 As Michael Warner argues, the discursive exchange of a
counterpublic is "structured by alternative dispositions or protocols,
making different assumptionsabout what can be said or what goes without saying" (2002, 56-7). The engagement with boy-love manga on the
part of female readers, who are perceived by and large as "straight"
women, and thus coded as part of a larger "mass"normative public, concurrently positions them as part of a counterpublic resistant to blithely
consuming idealized heteronormative media. Referring to the complex
and transnational network of readers of boy-love manga as part of a
public or, in my view, counterpublic is more efficacious than describing
them as an audience. My reasoning here stems in part from the fact that
readersoften lack the clear specificity of a concrete audience, especially
now that these comics are being read across different countries, genders,
sexualities, and age groups. Indeed, "a public is always in excess of its
known social basis" because the self-organization of a public is "as a
body of strangers united through the circulation of their discourse"
(Warner 2002, 74, 86). This of course makes it difficult to then quantify
and assessa public as social scientists would like to.
Because boy-love manga are erotic in content, they necessarily
speak to intimate desires and fantasies, both conscious and unconscious,
among readers. How does one quantitatively assess individuals' sexual
desires and fantasies?The very intangible and often unconscious nature
of such things makes this nigh on impossible, most especially because
researchers' interpretations of such information often affect how it is
, Judith Halberstam elupresented or read. In her book FemaleMasculinity
cidates this point when she paraphrasesR. C. Lewontin's suggestion that
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"people tend not to be truthful when it comes to reporting on their own
sexual behavior (men exaggerate and women downplay, for example),
and there are no ways to make allowances for personal distortion within
social science methods" (1998, 11). While surveys can provide important
insight on small groups of individuals, they can never adequately represent the entirety of a large and nebulous public; nor can they ascertain
definitive or collective truths about fluid and indistinct fantasies and
desires, especially across multiple cultural, linguistic, and national
divides. It is my contention, therefore, that a more productive methodological avenue lies in considering the growing global readership for
boy-love manga as a counterpublic that establishes discursive connections between strangers, reflecting their intimate engagements with
texts and their differing subjective and cultural contexts for reading
boy-love manga. Indeed, not everyone has to read boy-love manga in
the same way in order to be part of this counterpublic.
Publics come into being "only in relation to texts and their circulation" (Warner 2002, 66), which is the foundation of boy-love manga
readershipand fandom. Those who read boy-love manga do not remain
passive receivers of the texts. Instead,these comics often act as a gateway
to a "concatenationof texts" (90). Fansbegin to create their own doujinshi
(fan manga), write their own fiction stories, participate in related areas
like slashfandom,9establishtheir own Web sites, begin their own translation and scanlation projects, attend anime and manga conventions, chat
in online forums, and so on. The discourse of this rather varied and
increasinglyWeb-based counterpublic relies on sharedcircuits of textual
circulation that often transcend even the rather obvious constraints of
language barriers.Because so much of boy-love manga requiresimagistic
reading practices, discourse often happens at the level of shared images
that do not require words. At the same time, the concatenation of texts
has also establisheda certain degree of sharedterminology among all language groups. Words like yaoi, shonen-ai, doujinshi,uke, seme, and bishonen
become part of the collective jargon of this particular counterpublic discourse, regardlessof an individual'snative language.
A great deal of boy-love manga, especially doujinshi created by
amateur fans, focuses on parody- frequently taking prominent male
characters from other manga or anime and developing romantic and
sexual relationshipsbetween them. This is very similar to the practice of
slash writing, a crossover area of fandom for many Western readers,
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although more emphasisis placed on the visual images than on the written content. In boy-love manga, the love between male characters often
transcendsconcerns about gender and sexuality, which tend to be seen
as irrelevant or beside the point. Some critics have noted similar tendencies in slash fiction, or more particularly the propensity to leave the sexuality of characters open or unresolved and thus allow for "a much
greater range of identification and desire" for readers (Penley 1992, 488).
Although I see boy-love manga narratives as containing radical queer
potential, I do not want to universalize them or suggest that they are
queerly or otherwise Utopianand free of problems in their articulations
of same-sex desire. Most stories contain moments in which lead characters express fears or concerns about revealing their relationships, and
being labeled as gay and thus socially perceived as feminine in negative
ways. What I do want to emphasize here is that characters generally
overcome these fears and embrace their love for one another despite
what society may think of them, which in my mind is a significant fantasy of resistance.
Unlike slash fiction, a great deal of boy-love manga is commercially
published.11Many prominent yaoi mangaka(professional manga artists)
began their careers as amateur doujinshi artists who gained enough popularity to begin producing and commercially distributing their own
original manga.12It is also worth noting here that independently produced doujinshi is frequently sold noncommercially at fan conventions
in Japansuch as the annualComiket, and that the Internet has provided a
space for amateur artists in Japanand other countries to share their work
with other fans often free of charge. Similarly, "the activity/productivity oidojinshigroups occurs outsidethe mainstreamof Japanesesociety and
economy, rendering it invisible to those studying more conventional
forms of production"(Orbaugh 2003, 112). Therefore, although the publishing industry for boy-love manga flourishes in Japanand is growing in
the United States, noncommercial production and circulation of texts
still plays a predominant role in the development of this counterpublic
discourse. The Internet has become an incredibly valuable tool for sharing, sometimes illegally, scanlations and images from both published and
fan-produced manga. This then allows for a greater concatenation of
texts across cultural boundaries so that, for instance, Western fans are
now producing their own doujinshinarratives in English, some of which
are being publishedby the very newly establishedYaoi Press.13Similarly,
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Japanese doujinshiartists are creating boy-love manga for popular English texts such as those of the Harry Potter franchise, demonstrating the
artistic and textual appropriationsand fusions occurring cross culturally
among fans. These connections also reinforce the crucial importance of
technology in broadening the network of fans and their discourse.
Without a doubt, publishers are already aware of this fact. For
instance, Tokyopop makes many of its publication decisions based on the
desires of the English-speaking fan community. They conduct online
surveys regularly on their Web site to allow fans to vote for and offer
suggestions for titles they want published. This requires that fans
already be aware of titles currently circulating in Japan, but not yet
translated and commercially sold in North America- something they
can usually best achieve via Internet communication and file sharing. In
fact, there are numerous Web sites in which fans offer up amateur translations, and even scanlations, of texts not yet available in English. Outside the World Wide Web, fans may also participate in various anime
and manga conventions, many of which are now organizing special sessions and panels on boy-love themes as the popularity of these texts
increases. And even more particularly, there is now an established YaoiCon devoted exclusively to yaoi and shonen-aianime and manga that
takes place each year in San Francisco.1 This convention also works to
foster international relations between fans by welcoming attendees from
all over the world and by inviting a different boy-love manga artist as
their special guest each year.
At present, many of the bigger U.S. publishers such as Tokyopop
have been aggressively marketing all their manga, shonen-aititles included, at major bookstores, including Barnes and Noble, Borders, and
Waldenbooks, bringing these comics out of the realm of the Internet
undergroundand into the mainstream.16Even the more sexually explicit
yaoi titles are becoming more widely published and readily available in
mainstream bookstores. Central Park Media has launched its very own
yaoi publishing line of manga for those eighteen and over called Be
Beautiful Manga.17Other publishers, among them Digital Manga, Kitty
Media, Viz, and Dark Horse, are quickly leaping on the bandwagon as
they become more attuned to the demand among readers.18U.S. consumers are evidently buying these texts and in a quantity sufficient to
propel other publishers into the foray of boy-love manga at an increasingly rapid rate.19
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Tokyopop claims that their overall manga readership is about 60
percent female and, as in Japan, this percentage for their shonen-aireadership is presumablyhigher given that they are being marketed primarily toward teenage girls (Reid 2003, par. 7).20However, in the United
States, strong efforts have been made to restrict teenagers from being
able to purchase the more explicit yaoi texts. Publishers have not only
been shrink-wrappingthese graphic novels, but also putting clear warnings on the covers that indicate they are "for adults only" and adding disclaimers emphasizing that none of the characters depicted are under the
age of eighteen. This is particularly interesting because many characters, in keeping with the androgynous aesthetic of boy-love manga,
often appear to be rather young, rendering the distinction between adolescent and adult murky at best save for the reassuranceof the publisher's note. As numerous English-language fan-based yaoi Web sites and
conventions attest, teens are still a large part of this market although
they often have to employ covert means of getting copies of more racy
texts. As a result, many of them are downloading free boy-love manga
scanlations from the Internet. The fact that young girls as well as
women are reading boy-love manga challenges Western efforts to maintain a rigid distinction between adult and child sexuality, the latter of
which is often denied or strictly policed in order to protect a mythologized ideal of erotic innocence (Kincaid 1998). In contrast, I find it
somewhat ironic that teenage girls in Japan can readily buy yaoi manga
without the same kind of social constraint. Indeed, "Japanesesociety has
not traditionally made as severe a distinction between adult and child
sexuality as has the west [sic]"(McLelland2000a, 284).
Precisely because the targeted readershipfor these comics, especially
shonen-ai
titles, consists largely of girls who are at a liminal stage between
childhood and adulthood, they powerfully showcase certain cultural
anxieties about sexual control surrounding bodies, and specifically
female ones, that do not satisfactorily fit into the child or adult category.
Indeed, the counterpublicitself queers such understandings,troubling the
lines between adolescent and adult in much the same way that it complicates gender and sexual identity among readers and characters in the
texts themselves. This in itself is what is presumablyso worrying to those
who want to enforce these distinctions in order to restrict access to erotic
media. As Gayle Rubin (1992) has argued, "rather than recognizing the
sexuality of the young and attempting to provide for it in a caring and
WOOD
responsible manner, our [American] culture denies and punishes erotic
interest and activity by anyone under the local age of consent . . .
[minors] are forbidden to see books, movies, or television in which sexuality is 'too' graphically portrayed"(20). In light of such attitudes, technology can become a gateway for shared communication between teens
who are part of the boy-love manga counterpublic, while at the same
time serving as a restrictive barrier to their parentsand other adults, who
are often unfamiliar with such methods of textual circulation and networking and who seemingly remain largely unaware of the phenomenon
itself. The Internet not only provides the means for teens to access such
erotic media but also offers them the opportunity to create their own
erotic fan fiction and art and distribute them to others. It also allows
them the freedom of anonymity and the potential to construct or present
an online identity resistant to social constraintssurroundingage, gender,
race, class, and sexuality. It is reasonable to suggest, therefore, that
important shifts in how these readers conceptualize and fantasize about
love and sex can be observed through their participationin Internet communication, discourse, and textual circulation that mark them as part of a
global counterpublic.
While U.S. media has begun to take more notice of the popularity
of manga among children and teenagers, those texts that belong to the
boy-love genre have largely remained below the radarof the more conservative mainstream as yet. Women's investment in boy-love manga,
both here and in other countries, already suggests certain dissatisfactions
with the fantasies offered by mainstream media and traditional heteronormative romance. Instead, these comics and the circulation of fan discourse surroundingthem seem to project a more promising queer vision
of love and desire. For asJudith Butler makes clear in UndoingGender,"in
the same way that queer theory opposes those who would regulate identities or establish epistemological claims of priority for those who make
claims to certain kinds of identities, it seeks not only to expand the community base of antihomophobic activism, but, rather, to insist that sexuality is not easily summarized or unified through categorization" (2004,
7). I have attempted to demonstrate throughout this essay that the crosscultural and global intersections of the boy-love manga counterpublic
make it problematic to theorize about the popularity of these texts by
segregating communities of readers along cultural lines. When this
occurs, we run the risk of falling into troubling universalizations of
409
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QUEER
WOMEN,
those communities of readers that not only ignore their differences
within those cultural contexts, but also attempt to explain their individual desires and fantasiesin totalizing ways. Examining this phenomenon
at the level of counterpublic discourse can offer us new perspective into
how boy-love manga has become a compelling site for transnational
readership and communication in a growing network of intimate and
diverse strangers. It is my contention that the global nature of this counterpublic in fact facilitates subversive queer identifications and desires
by generating productive tensions between heterogeneous and incoherent transculturalcontexts and the intimate fantasies and engagements of
readersthat are never fully explicit, accessible, or quantifiable.
ANDREA
WOOD
is a PhD candidate at the University of Florida. Her interests include gender and cultural studies, feminist and queer theory, and
subcultural media. She is currently completing her dissertation, titled
"RadicalizingRomance: Subculture, Sex, and Audience Expectations."
NOTES
1. Mangaare also being publishedwidely in Western Europe,but for the sake of
scope I am confiningmy discussionto North America only.
2. One of the difficulties with terminology lies in the fact that these words are
constantlychangingsignificationin Japan,andnew termsare rapidlybeing coined to
has apparentlybecome obsoletein
replaceold ones. In point of fact, the termshonen-ai
Japan,while yaoihas been replacedby Boys'Love,also referredto as BL. Internetfan
communitiesappearto be more up-to-date on these changesthan the academicprint
world, andAestheticism.comprovidesone of the more detailedbreakdownsof terms
at http://www.aestheticism.com. For the purposesof this essay, I will refer to the
texts currentlypublishedby Tokyopopandtheir competitorsas shonen-ai,
in line with
their own advertisementof them as such, and retain yaoias a contrastingterm for
more sexually explicit manga that such pressesas CPM, Digital Manga, and Kitty
Media are all using. This is partlynecessaryas well becauseof the time gap in publicationof titles in English-speakingcountriesversusthose in Japan,as ours are generexist, but I
ally severalyears behind. VariousEnglishspellingsof the term shonen-ai
have chosento use the versionemployedby Tokyopop.
3. Although I would note here that Joshua Mostow (2003) suggests that male
sexual behaviorin earlier periodsof Japanesehistory and artisticproductioncannot
be properlycontainedwithin the binary of heterosexual and homosexual, and that
we "need studies that look critically at the whole range of sexual activity and
desire"(70) in previoustime periods.
4. There is a corresponding genre of girl-love manga in Japan that is often
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referredto as shojo-aior, for more sexually explicit texts, yuri.However, the genre
is much smallerand has fewer publicationsin Japan.Interestin these texts is growing though and in the United States AniLesboCon (ALC) Publishingis currently
releasing some yurianthologies with manga from Japaneseartists as well as other
Western amateurmangaartists.
5. While some sexual power play occurs in certain boy-love manga, it is generally playful, and erotic encounters between the main characters are still overwhelmingly markedby tendernessand a mutualitythat emphasizethe equal importance of both characters'sexual and emotional needs. However, I must note here
that there is a subgenre of BDSM yaoi for women in Japan (BDSM is a common
abbreviationused to refer to anything dealing with bondage, domination, submission, sadism, and/or masochism). CPM recently brought out the first yaoimanga
containingBDSM tendenciesin North America when it releasedAyano Yamane's
FinderSeries1: Targetin the Finderin September 2005.
6. The first volume in this series was very recently releasedby Be Beautiful, in
September2005.
7. McLellandhas noted that there are alreadynumerousyaoiWeb sites "in Chinese, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Spanish,although they are vastly outnumbered by those in English" (2000a, 283). This is one compelling example of the
increasingtransnationalpopularityof these comics.
8. As Janice Radway notes in her revised introduction to ReadingtheRomance:
Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature: "Even the most progressive of recent
romance continues to bind female desire to a heterosexuality constructed as the
only naturalsexual alliance, and thus continuesto prescribepatriarchalmarriageas
the ultimate route to the realizationof a maturefemale subjectivity"(16).
9. Slash fiction is a form of fan fiction writing that originated in the 1970s
among female StarTrekfans who began writing homoerotic love stories about Kirk
and Spock. The term slashitself was coined in relation to the tendency to refer to
pairings between male characters with a stroke or slash, as in, for example,
or K/S.
Kirk/Spock
10. Scanlationrefers to the fan-based practice of translatingmanga texts into
anotherlanguage (in this case English) and scanningthem online with the translations insertedinto the necessaryframesanddialoguebubblesof the comic.
11. As explained in "Normal Female Interest in Men Bonking" (1998): "Slash
stories circulate within the private realm of fandom, are publishedin zines, distributed throughthe mails, throughe-mail, or passedhand to hand among enthusiasts.
The noncommercialnature of slashpublishingis necessitatedby the fact that these
storiesmake unauthorizeduse of media characters"(10).
12. There are many examples of this, but one of the more popular figures is
Ayano Yamane,whose work is currentlyunderlicense to CPM for U.S. publication.
13. Formore information,visit their Web site at http://www.yaoipress.com
14. Other publishersare following Tokyopop s lead, andmost of their Web sites
now have surveysand forms for visitors to fill out that usuallyask about what titles
they would like to see in future.
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WOMEN,
15.Yaoi-Conis a fan-basedconventioncenteredon yaoiandshonen-ai
themedanime
and manga. It was foundedin 2001 and occurs annuallyin San Francisco.Attendees
come from all over the world to participatein this weekend long event. There are
many activitiesfor fans to participatein such as: games,video screenings,discussion
panels,amateurkaraoke,costume competitions,and shoppingin the dealer'sroom.
However, due to legal restrictionsin the state of Californiathat do not allow minors
entrancewhere adultmaterialsarebeingsold,only thoseeighteenandoldercan attend.
The fan organizersof Yaoi-Con keep everyone updatedon future conventionsand
archiveinformationandpicturesfrompreviousyearsat http://www.yaoicon.com
titles have not been sepa16. It is significant to note that thus far, the shonen-ai
ratedfrom other titles, but ratherintegratedwith them. Bookstoresare organizing
all mangatitles together alphabeticallyin their graphicnovels sections.
17. Be Beautiful's main advertising tagline is "Romantic graphic novels by
women . . . for women." Informationabout this line is available at their Web site:
http://www.bebeautifulmanga.com
18. At the time that this essay was being preparedfor publication,several new
companies,DramaQueenand Blu Manga, emerged online indicating that they are
planningto release a slew of yaoititles in late fall 2005.
19. According to a recent article in Publishers
Weekly,boy-love manga titles are
indeed selling well. The most recent volume in Viz's shonen-aiseries, Descendants
of
Darkness,
by Yoko Matsushita,sold ten thousandcopies a few monthsafter its publication. Digital Manga's yaoi graphic novel Only the RingFingerKnows(2004), by
SatoruKannagiand Hotaru Odagiri, is now in its third printing and has sold more
thantwelve thousandcopies. Other Digital Mangatitles are also selling in the thousands,accordingto this report,andmore titles are set to be releasedsoon (Cha 2005).
20. It is importantto note here that Tokyopopalso publishesheterosexualmanga.
Therefore,the overall readershipis somewhatmore divided.As of yet, the company
hasnot releasedany statisticsspecificallyabouttheirboy-love mangareadership.
21. Not surprisingly,heterosexual romance novels are not policed in the same
manner,even thoughthey often contain explicit descriptionsof sexual acts.
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